Mic, tells it like it is and calls out the parents as abusive: “Elsa’s parents brutalize her instincts so that even as an adult, she lives in constant fear of herself.
‘Conceal, don’t feel,’ the princess is taught to tunefully recite in the film, which is based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, and hinges its chief conflict of eternal winter on the dangers of emotional suppression. In childhood, she injures her sister Anna during snowy playtime, and the half-stone trolls beseeched with healing Anna’s wound ask if Elsa was ‘born’ or ‘cursed’ with her gifts…Mom and Dad do acknowledge that Elsa was born this way, but after having Anna’s memory wiped, they nevertheless urge Elsa to remain in the family’s castle, its locked gates signifying the girl’s closed-off, guilt-ridden heart. Kurt Osenlund, Slant, explains that Elsa’s “ice-emitting powers” are a source of shame for them: So, where are the parents in all of this? Sisterhood of the family kind. Well, “family” often includes parents. Many say that the best and main element of Frozen is the sisterly love.
With their back stories, quirky personalities and faults, the sisters seem more human than animated, although they do have that big-eyed, wasp-waisted impossible prettiness that Disney just can’t seem to abandon.Īs impossible as it may seem, these two even pass the Bechdel test for feminism on film, where two women talk to each other about something other than a man. Linda Barnard, Toronto Star, who calls Frozen “Disney 2.0”, tells us some things that work best about the movie:īetter to focus on the stunning icicle kingdom, snowy landscape visuals and the engaging female characters, especially the funny, iron-willed Anna, whose love for her sister propels her quest. Just what is the meaning and/or message of the animated film Frozen? Many have been busily analyzing this question.įirst, the plot, in brief, from IMDB: “Fearless optimist Anna teams up with Kristoff in an epic journey, encountering Everest-like conditions, and a hilarious snowman named Olaf in a race to find Anna’s sister Elsa, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.”